Premier Scott Moe announced new COVID-19 testing targets that Saskatchewan must reach before his government can begin making its way toward lifting restrictions that are choking the economy and daily life in the province.
He challenged the Saskatchewan Health Authority to reach 1,000 tests per day “as soon as possible” and 1,500 by the end of April. That will ensure officials aren’t flying blind as they assess the impact of reopening the economy in the future.
Moe was reacting to what he called “tremendously alarming” modelling information from the Saskatchewan Health Authority that detail frightening scenarios of how bad COVID-19 could strike the province’s health care system.
“It strengthens my resolve to ensure that we need to continue to deal with this in exactly the way we have been in this province,” said Moe.
That means Moe has no intention of relaxing public health and emergency measures that limit gatherings, close down a wide range of businesses and dramatically recast how others operate.
“We are still several weeks away from even beginning that process,” said Moe.
Saskatchewan will get its first hint of how deeply those measures have cut into employment on Thursday morning as Statistics Canada releases its first jobs numbers since COVID-19 began spreading widely in Canada.
Moe is expecting devastating news.
“I would say that it’s pretty grim with respect to t0 the temporary and permanent layoffs that we’re seeing in all sorts of industries across this province,” said Moe.
He said he wakes up every morning bracing himself for news about deaths in Saskatchewan. But the economic impact of measures to prevent precisely those tragedies are also weighing on him, according to his Wednesday remarks.
“That would be the second thing that I think about every morning is the impact on our economy of what these past few weeks and likely the next number of weeks are going to have on our economy — and how we are going to enter the recovery phase,” said Moe.
Saskatchewan’s number of active COVID-19 cases has been relatively stable in recent days, and is currently at 165, as recoveries have so far matched or outpaced new infections every day this week.
In Moe’s view, that is evidence that Saskatchewan’s measures are working and that it should chart a steady course.
“We’re happy with that, and we’ll continue as long as these numbers are able to continue,” said Moe. “We are not actively considering further restrictions and, at this point, we’re not actively considering removing any restrictions either.”
The Roy Romanow Provincial Laboratory processed about 900 tests on Tuesday, the highest number ever. Moe said it must do more by achieving the targets he set on Wednesday.
“We can always do better and we will,” said Moe.
He said the Saskatchewan Health Authority is also working with nursing schools to increase staff available for contact tracing, which involves tracking down those who have come into contact with confirmed cases to control the spread of infection. The SHA has already increased contact tracing capacity by 300 per cent since its COVID-19 response began.
Moe said expanded testing and contact tracing will be essential to give health officials the information they need to track how efforts to open up the economy affect COVID-19 caseloads. So long as cases remain “manageable” for the health system, the government could think about going further.
But if cases go up, it would have to pull back.
“If the numbers stabilized, then you would have a conversation about maybe removing a further restriction or, unfortunately, if the numbers happened to rise, you would then bring a restriction back into place,” he said.
